1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a simulation system, an ink consumption amount simulation device, and a cost server used for supporting the selection of an appropriate printer based on running costs.
2. Description of the Related Art
In offices, a large amount of documents have been copied and printed on a daily basis. Because of this situation, there is a demand for reducing the running cost including ink/toner consumption costs, a cost charged based on the number of printed sheets, and a unit cost. To that end, there have been proposed some techniques to reduce the running cost based on the number of copied sheets and the consumed amount of consumables such as ink and toner (see, for example, Cited Document 1). The Cited Document 1 suggests that a printer administrator select an appropriate printer consuming less toner in a recommended printing setting as a reference setting and the printing charge be determined based on a printing setting by a user who refers the recommended printing setting. As a result, it is suggested to the user to select the recommended printing setting in an attempt to reduce the running cost.    Cited Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-037918.
As described in the cited document 1, it may be desirable to reduce the running costs of ink and toner as far as the daily amount of printing is concerned. However, there may be another case where a user requires an expressive output of printing depending on, for example, the content of documents and the purpose of use. In actual operations, a user selects monochrome or color and also the ink injection amount when printing.
However, there is a remaining problem that the user can hardly check whether the setting by the user's own choice is really good for reducing the running cost. As a result, a setting made by a user for reducing the running cost may possibly lead to an increase of the running cost, contrary to the will of the user.
Further, and similarly, it may be difficult to select an appropriate printer capable of reducing the running cost or having excellent characteristics in balance between the running cost and expressive output to meet the content of documents that the user prints in many cases and the user's purpose of use.